diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index d6a6c2acc86..cf7b6e3cb40 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -551,6 +551,7 @@ jobs:
           echo "OPENCLAW_VITEST_MAX_WORKERS=2" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
           if [ "$TASK" = "test" ]; then
             echo "OPENCLAW_TEST_PROJECTS_LEAF_SHARDS=1" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
+            echo "OPENCLAW_TEST_PROJECTS_PARALLEL=6" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
             echo "OPENCLAW_TEST_SKIP_FULL_EXTENSIONS_SHARD=1" >> "$GITHUB_ENV"
           fi
           if [ "$TASK" = "channels" ]; then
diff --git a/src/scripts/test-projects.test.ts b/src/scripts/test-projects.test.ts
index 7097e4230fb..99253f0f568 100644
--- a/src/scripts/test-projects.test.ts
+++ b/src/scripts/test-projects.test.ts
@@ -414,6 +414,7 @@ describe("test-projects args", () => {
   it("keeps explicit project-level parallelism authoritative", () => {
     expect(
       resolveParallelFullSuiteConcurrency(58, {
+        GITHUB_ACTIONS: "true",
         OPENCLAW_TEST_PROJECTS_PARALLEL: "3",
         OPENCLAW_VITEST_MAX_WORKERS: "1",
       }),